Some remarks regarding comparative morality

By Alexander Eterman

Posted April 20, 2004

What
we are about to discuss is a thesis popular in liberal Orthodox
(primarily made up of progressive Anglo-Saxons) Jewish circles:

In our time, the ethic behavior of the
Orthodox Jew does not differ in any way from that of the average European. Why?
Because today's Halachah permits the type of conduct that is prescribed by
European ethics.

1) To
begin with, the thesis creates certain linguistic and semantic problems
that must be resolved before our discussion can have any meaning. What is this
about? What is ethical behavior -- a nebulous and hardly precise term?
Since both Jews and Europeans display vastly different modes of conduct in practical
life, the term apparently refers to theoretical ethic standards or norms
of behavior. According to the thesis, these norms are shared by both
Jews and Europeans. That is to say, a European merchant should not cheat in
weighing goods -- the same as a Jew. Any Jew or European who acts otherwise is
aware of committing a sin. Moreover, he knows that he would be censured by
society were he to be caught in his wrongdoing. What the thesis asserts
is actually two claims: that present ethic standards are identical for Jews and
Europeans and that the modern Halachah sanctions this. Neither of these claims
is self-evident. Thus, the Halachah of the past rejected the
anti-discriminatory, egalitarian ethic norms of the type adopted in
contemporary Europe. What the thesis asserts is that this objection, in
part at least, has been removed.

2) There
is no doubt that the thesis reflects a real phenomenon: the softening of
the anti-gentile laws, already introduced in the Talmud and considered
an inseparable part of Judaism, that has taken place in some Israeli and
Western Jewish communities. Today these communities are permitted to save the
lives of sick gentiles, to return the objects lost by gentiles, and to conduct
honest business dealings with gentiles. As we know, classical Jewish sources
beginning with the Talmud categorically rejected the very idea of equality
between Jews and gentiles. For example, these sources impose an automatic death
sentence on anyone they define as an idolater; in most cases they prohibit Jews
from saving the lives of endangered gentiles, oblige the Jews to maltreat
gentiles in commercial transactions, make it permissible and even obligatory to
deceive gentiles in certain cases, and so on. Among other things, these sources
(hereinafter referred to as "Halachah" for the sake of brevity) permit Jews to
appropriate the money and property borrowed from a gentile in the case of the
latter's death, and even to lie to his heirs regarding their financial
relations with the deceased; forbid Jews to return objects lost by a gentile,
and permit Jews to exploit a miscalculation made by a gentile, provided the
mistake benefits the Jew. Hereafter, we will refer to the aforementioned and
similar property injunctions as "the license to maltreat the gentile"; we have
selected them more or less at random as typological examples of the moral
injunctions of old Halachah.

3) Essentially,
Halachah in the aforementioned liberal communities followed in the footsteps of
European ethics. What this means is that local Jews, accustomed to the ethical
standards of the liberal society in which they lived, modified their religious
laws in a way that would sanction their adherence to European standards. If we
are to tentatively label European ethics as Pascalean, [1]
we will have to admit that Halachah, to some extent, has conceded defeat to
Pascal.

4) Interestingly
enough, it was only a few particular communities that capitulated to Pascal.
Many, in fact the majority of them, displayed a remarkable immunity to European
ethics. Following Pascal, halachic reforms were taken up only by that portion
of the Jewish world which in any case had long been thinking and acting
according to Pascal, [2]
people whose sole reason for feeling uneasy in Europe is that they identify
themselves as Orthodox Jews; were they to discard their Jewishness and
Orthodoxy, they would feel as natural in Pascal's ethics as fish in water.
Moreover, this world surrendered to Pascal in no other form than by giving rise
to rabbis nurtured on European ethics, i.e. on a perpetual contradiction -- on
other words, people who, while apparently adhering to Halachah, felt and often
acted in defiance of it. Ultimately, these rabbis simply caved in to
themselves, surrendering to their own habits. [3]
However, all the other Jewish collective bodies, totally ignorant of Pascal,
the product of an environment whose thoughts and feelings are unaffected by
Pascal and which rejects the universal human rights, do not share European
weaknesses, and thus have not surrendered to Pascal. Ovadia Yosef has not
become infused with love for the Arabs by any means, and the Satmar Rebbe
continues to view non-Jewish blood as water.

5) Europeanized
Halachah, as we already know from the thesis, means the sanction (not
even the duty) to live according to Pascal. Therefore it is derivative, like
any sanction added at a later date, and a forced sanction at that. In fact, it
does not lay any claim to originality. Originality was the province of the
Talmud, whose system of thought had nothing to do with Pascal, and of Talmudic
offshoots in the form of classical rabbinical literature. In this literature
too, Pascal has no place. The direction taken by theoretical Jewish thought was
far from humanistic -- rather the opposite: traditionally, it has been the
embodiment of conservative reaction. In our instance, practice has overtaken theory.
Pascal was first adopted by the custodians of Halachah, and only then
legitimized by Halachah itself -- and not by the entire body of Halachah either!

6) Naturally,
this inevitably raises two questions: Why do we need this Halachah, derivative
and splintered as it is? Furthermore, does it not owe its origins to the
earthly and the pragmatic? In any case, its moral aspirations immediately come
under suspicion. Had it been
unified, divine, and original, it would never have changed, splintered, and most
importantly, openly capitulated before an alien culture. Not to mention that,
had that been the case, this Halachah would never have split into clans whose
views, by sheer accident of course, happen to resemble those of the people
among whom these clans exist. This is rather reminiscent of the way the Jews,
while strictly observing the laws of racial purity and never intermixing with
the surrounding peoples, somehow come to bear an uncanny resemblance -- once
again, purely accidental -- to their immediate neighbors.

7) More
important yet, Halachah does not even have the courage to prescribe European-style ethic conduct to its
adherents; it is incapable of conferring unambiguous legitimacy on Pascal's
views. The absolute maximum it can do is acquiesce in such conduct -- if
and when it does so. This forces us to ask an even more demanding question:
what, then, is the use of such an Halachah? After all, forced acquiescence
in moral behavior does not constitute an act of moral leadership, nor even
moral instruction; morality is not created and perfected through acquiescence.
The resulting impression is that Halachah retreats toward morality in
the face of circumstances instead of advancing in that direction -- a
rather lamentable sight.

8) All
of the above presents convincing and even elegant proof of the earthly nature
of Jewish Halachah (assuming, of course, that we still need such proof today).
However, the mere fact that Halachah as a whole is a man-made product does not
necessarily negate its originality or, for that matter, its ability to compete
with other religious concepts -- which, apparently, did not tumble down from the
sky either. At the same time, Jewish ethics is not only a human invention, but
one that is devoid of all allure, derivative, plagiarized, alien to the
Halachic flesh, and made up of numerous layers to boot. It obviously tags along
after the social norms courageously generated by other peoples and religions;
moreover, it does so in a listless and reluctant manner, only when forced by
circumstances to reconcile itself to the absence of any alternatives.

9) The
Jews would not have even conceived of adopting the concept of egalitarianism
immediately upon its birth, at the time it had to be fought for, say, during
the Age of Enlightenment. However, after it had become a social fait accompli,
when -- within a certain limited space far smaller than Europe -- both the rabbis
and the congregants of certain communities had been nurtured, reeducated, and
absorbed by the egalitarian social system -- only then did the essentially
egalitarian Jewish body suddenly managed to recall the halachic prohibition
against egalitarianism. By a prodigious mental effort, those rabbis formulated
new laws (naturally, they presented them as ancient and primary, just like in
Carroll's book), sanctioning the already commonly accepted egalitarian conduct.
In the process, they forgot that what makes the primary rules primary is the
very fact of their prescribing rather than sanctioning, instructing rather than
acquiescing to people's wishes, bravely creating prohibitions along with
dispensations rather than covering up transparent plagiarism with belated
acceptance of it. Moreover, having pronounced these laws to be immutable, they
overlooked the fact that they should be universal rather than clannish. Indeed,
they overlooked everything except their own convenience -- hence their present
inability to justify their actions.

10) What is
truly amazing is the blatantly derivative nature of this Halachah, forcing even
a friendly observer to wonder whether it can be of any possible use -- at least
where norms of social behavior are concerned. Why do we need Halachah when we
have access to its original source -- Pascal? Come to think of it, we have been
told that God created the world by following the Torah like an architectural
blueprint. The actual impression is that (nowadays at least) this is not
exactly the case: divinely inspired rabbis are creating Halachah with their
noses in Pascal's little volume, heaving heavy sighs all the while -- as if
instead of teaching goodness, they are discharging humiliating debts.

11) Significantly,
since Jews nurtured on Pascal view the halachic permission not to maltreat
the gentile as nothing but the religious way of honoring an already
withdrawn moral check -- in other words, a way of removing an obstacle to their
social advance (simultaneously European and late- if not post-Christian), they
do not much care about the technique and the pretext used to modify the ancient
halachic rule that for centuries commanded the Jew to maltreat the gentile.
However, the overwhelming majority of genuine Orthodox Jews (i.e. those who
treat Halachah as no laughing matter) were educated in the spirit of old
Halachah rather than Pascal. They view the European norms as alien, even
hostile. This is not to say that all other
Jews deliberately maltreat people of other faiths -- far from it; yet, fully in
keeping with classical Jewish sources, they regard this practice as morally
permissible, and base their decision on practical as opposed to ethical
considerations. For such people -- and, as we have already said, they form a
fairly large majority in the Orthodox world -- the halachic reforms carried out
by the Jewish adherents of Pascal do not at all constitute moral arguments.
What is more, these reforms do not at all teach them the Pascalean norms.
Frequently, they cause considerable social damage, reinforcing the Orthodox
communities' compliance with the problematic principles of old Halachah, and
driving them away from Pascal -- all this, naturally, provided that these
communities are inclined to take the said reforms into account at all.

12) Indeed, as
we have stressed above, the aforementioned reforms, aimed solely at like-minded
people interested in those reforms -- reforms of a seemingly ethical nature --
were carried out in a rather peculiar manner -- ad hoc, under strange
pretexts, without condemning or abolishing the old norms, without defining the
new norms as binding and dismissing the old ones as unfeasible, and most
importantly, without formulating the reform, regardless of its technical
aspect, so as to express a clear rejection of the former practice as amoral. A
pronouncement that timidly permits a Jew to not to maltreat the gentile may be
quite satisfactory to admirers of Pascal, but it has no binding effect on those
who -- in strict adherence to the Talmud -- believe that the earth is flat, and
that idolaters, regardless of their conduct, are doomed to eternal suffering.
Moreover, any disinterested (that is non-Pascalean) observer, after evaluating
the nature of these reforms, will only become more entrenched in his pre-reform
views. When all is said and done, if the good old Talmud damns those who fail
to maltreat the gentile, while Maimonides maintains that such a philanthropist
fosters the devilish and evil forces in the world, what can one expect from a
pronouncement such as the following: since in our day and age information
travels rapidly and far, maltreatment may lead to a pogrom; in order to avoid a
pogrom, it is permissible not to maltreat the gentile. Such a
pronouncement, while making life easier for the conscientious proponent of
Pascal, one who conducts his affairs in an honest manner in any case, does
nothing to reeducate the opponent. The moral aspect of old Halachah has not
been discredited. The very norm of misappropriating another's property to
another has not been censured. Moreover, someone who decides to pose as a hero
ready to stand up for his interests, or who simply believes that his action
would pass unnoticed, will obviously ignore the injunction and remain of the
same opinion. What is even worse, in the countless situations that are not
directly covered by the reform, the opponent will assume the unchallenged
monopoly of the old and quite consistent theory. In other words, this reform
has not even challenged the moral principles of old Halachah, which enjoin all
those named in the Talmud to continue their discriminatory practices.

13) Thus the
halachic reforms of the New Age do not contain any moral condemnation of the
norms they set out to rectify; that is to say, they pass no moral judgment
on the old morality. This fact not only renders them empty of meaning, it
clearly demonstrates that these reforms have either come too late or before
their time. In either case, they are incapable of breathing new life into
Jewish mores (since their intended beneficiaries have already consented to
these reforms); in fact, the opposite seems to be the case: they strengthen the
archaic discriminatory principles rooted in Judaism. Reforms and innovations of
this kind are no match for the old and tried Talmudic Halachah. If these
reforms are all our modernity has to offer, we would be better off hiding out
in the kitchen until the advent of the Ice Age of postmodernism. When faced
with Maimonides' somewhat obscurantist suggestions, we can at least find solace
in the fact that they have long become antiquated, along with his cosmological
theory, to take one example. However, in the case of social dicta accepted in
the mid-20th century by Einstein's contemporaries, all we can do is
bury our heads in the sand from the shame of it all.

[1] To be sure, there are other suitable names of
prominent moral thinkers, so that our choice is fairly random.

[2] This is one of the more interesting tautologies to
the best of our recollection.

[3] In approximately the same fashion, Jewish homosexuals
and the rabbis of their communities sanction their non-traditional sexual
practices today.